New Years Day In Chelmsford
The missus and I are enjoying a couple of days off work together - our first of the holidays (and for a long time before that). When we woke this morning we started to discuss possible plans for the day. The idea that stuck was a trip to Chelmsford. My missus lost her mum when she was a little girl and that is where her mum was buried. For various reasons the grave has not been properly visited for years.
We had planned to do this trip in September but all plans had been wiped out when my chest infection struck and this was the first day we were both free and had reasonable weather since then to try again. We located the grave fairly quickly and the missus quickly set about tending where it was overgrown and securing the flowers she had brought. The almost fifty years since has passed had not been too kind to her gravestone (leaving it barely legible) so we resolved to fix that in the coming year. It got quite emotional before we left but now we have located and visited future visits should be much easier.
After the cemetery we drove past the house where the missus and her family lived when she was a kid. We also had a look at the local country pile/tourist attraction 'Hylands House' which had fascinated the missus when she was a kid though she had never got to visit despite it being barely a mile away from her home. We have seen it now so that's another box ticked and it was nice to fill out the day with something more pleasant than a three hour round trip to a cemetery. We both felt the benefit of that.
This week I have been mostly reading: Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch
We had planned to do this trip in September but all plans had been wiped out when my chest infection struck and this was the first day we were both free and had reasonable weather since then to try again. We located the grave fairly quickly and the missus quickly set about tending where it was overgrown and securing the flowers she had brought. The almost fifty years since has passed had not been too kind to her gravestone (leaving it barely legible) so we resolved to fix that in the coming year. It got quite emotional before we left but now we have located and visited future visits should be much easier.
After the cemetery we drove past the house where the missus and her family lived when she was a kid. We also had a look at the local country pile/tourist attraction 'Hylands House' which had fascinated the missus when she was a kid though she had never got to visit despite it being barely a mile away from her home. We have seen it now so that's another box ticked and it was nice to fill out the day with something more pleasant than a three hour round trip to a cemetery. We both felt the benefit of that.
This week I have been mostly reading: Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch